Sunday is Funday!

Well, another day is almost in the books. My shift treats Sundays a little different that most other shifts I know of. Most guys like to take Sunday as an easy shift, relax, get caught up on little projects, etc. My shift uses Sunday to do big training that all the stations can get involved in together. Sundays are traditionally pretty slow around here, so that is the reason.

Today's training was scheduled to last about 2 hours, but wound up running 5! It was fun, but by the end we were starving and ready to get out of there.

The short version of what we did is as follows:

Each engine company was led into a completely dark room. You were wearing your pants, boots, and coat, but the rest of your gear was strewn about in the dark. You had to find it, assemble it, and put it on properly. This was easier for some people than for others...

As you can see in the pictures, this guy came out with his helmet on backwards!

Once everyone had their gear on, you were lead outside the room to a waiting ladder (everyone had wax paper in their masks so that you couldn't see). Now the fun begins! For the next 8 minutes you would pick the ladder up, then put the ladder down. Sometimes you would have to hold it overhead for a little while.

The point here was to get you tired and use up all your air. After your 8 minutes were up, you put the ladder down and had to assemble some items, get some hose unrolled, and spread out a bit without losing each other. They had fans and chainsaws and generators running so it was hard to communicate. Some groups really lost a ton of time here, and some groups got their stuff so spread out that it took a very long time to get everyone back together and ready for the next part.

My group did pretty good, we had seen the other go though, so we had an 'unfair advantage'. I kneeled on the hose ends so they wouldn't get lost and we made sure everyone had their stuff before we spread out, and me also made sure to keep good communication and contact throughout. Here I am putting the two ends of the hose together.

From here you had to crawl around a while and advance the line, then they would tell you that it was time to get out and you had to head back. When you got back to the room you started in, they would tell you that the roof had collapsed and you had to try and make your air last until help came. Several people ran out of air, but 2 out of 3 guys on my engine made it, so we were pretty pleased. My Lt. ran out, but he ran out right at the end, so it wasn't that bad. We had some people running out while trying to assemble the hoses.

(That's me in the middle again. I was the 'short' one in our group so I wound up in the middle!)

So that was pretty much my day. Hope you guys had a great weekend. Talk to you later.